Downloads of Apple's OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion top 3 million in 4 days

Apple's newly updated Mac operating system, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, has been downloaded more than 3 million times in its first four days, the company announced on Monday.

"Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever," said Philip Schiller, Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Mountain Lion launched on the Mac App Store last Wednesday as a $19.99 upgrade from Lion or Snow Leopard. It includes iCloud integration, a new messaging application, Notification Center, system-wide sharing, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center.

With more than 3 million copies downloaded in the first four days, Mountain Lion marks the most successful OS X launch in Apple's history. Last year, sales of OS X 10.7 Lion topped 1 million in its first day of availability, while total sales had exceeded 6 million by last October.

Customers who bought a new Mac after June 11 are eligible to upgrade to Mountain Lion at no cost.

The first public sign of Mountain Lion's success came last Friday, when Chitika Insights revealed that after just 48 hours of availability, Mountain Lion accounted for 3.2 percent of all Mac Web traffic. In just two days, the total usage of Mountain Lion tracked on the Web neared that of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

For an extensive look at the features and functionality found in Mountain Lion, see AppleInsider's in-depth Inside Mountain Lion series.

Comments

#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } I tried to buy it a few days after launch and just got a 404 error... While I repeatedly tried to get it to work, I noticed all the negative reviews.

Works fine for me (now that I know how to avoid four times download for my 4 Macs at home ...). The only surprise came from OpenOffice .odt opened by Textedit and .doc by Pages. It took me three hours to discover the effect of System Preferences ---> Security Preferences, and how to bypass the general policy for this particular application (incidentally, I moved from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, much better).

I've been using ML as my main OS since DP1. It works nicely on an Early 2008 MBP 2.4Ghz, 6GB RAM. I've had this machine since October 2008 and have been able to keep it current without any issues, and have been able to enjoy most of the features of each new OS (save for maybe AirDrop and now AirPlay.)

It's only $20 and you're getting a better OS and you'll be completely current. No reason not to upgrade.

Considering the small number of computers that will accept the Mountain Lion upgrade, I guess that number is relatively good. I'm sure Microsoft will claim 3 million Windows 8 upgrades within the first hour.

What negative reviews? It is a seamless upgrade to an awesome version.

Look at the Apple support forums, there are lots of scary looking reports. I took the plunge and have had zero problems, so I'm relieved. Mountain Lion is a decent incremental upgrade, with no obvious breakage so far.

Works fine for me (now that I know how to avoid four times download for my 4 Macs at home ...). The only surprise came from OpenOffice .odt opened by Textedit and .doc by Pages. It took me three hours to discover the effect of System Preferences ---> Security Preferences, and how to bypass the general policy for this particular application (incidentally, I moved from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, much better).

I have every version of all these various offerings including Neo Office because I have found various situations where only one suite would achieve something when the others couldn't. Case in point recently I had to convert a really out dated file format an online real estate system exported and I tried all three and only one worked.

Given the price point (Neo was $10 so I took a loan). The only version I refuse to install these days is from that old company that used to be around in the last century, what's it called? Oh yes, Microsoft. /wink

Considering the small number of computers that will accept the Mountain Lion upgrade, I guess that number is relatively good. I'm sure Microsoft will claim 3 million Windows 8 upgrades within the first hour.

I am waiting to see how long it will be before Microsoft have to offer a downgrade option for free from machines purchased with 8 pre installed to those screaming it is terrible and want 7 instead.

3 million in 4 days? That's LESS than last years 10.7 selling 1M in the first day¡

Don't think the sales numbers are what counts, to me it's the quality of the product. And if it's not massively popular, not some commercial success, somehow it feels more special. Kind of being part of an elite group, if you will.

Look at the Apple support forums, there are lots of scary looking reports. I took the plunge and have had zero problems, so I'm relieved. Mountain Lion is a decent incremental upgrade, with no obvious breakage so far.

Yet, just looking at Mountain Lion, the reviews are very positive, and it's getting excellent ratings in the App Store.

At some point you'll need to back up your data and take the plunge.

For example, I've got an Early 2008 MBP, 2.4Ghz, 6GB RAM. I've done a clean install of every OS upgrade since purchasing this machine in October 2008. Never had a problem. *EVER*. Not one. All of it was painless, each and every time. Which you'll find is the experience of the vast majority of users. Hence, the consumer satisfaction ratings we see for Macs, year after year.

1) I don't know why people are looking at user reviews on the Mac App Store for guidance. I can't think of a worse metric to use. I say read a review by a known tech writer. There are plenty out there.

2) So $60 million in revenue for the weekend. I wonder how much it cost to produce. I hope we'll be seeing these incremental updates YoY just as we've seen with iOS from the start. Waiting years and then getting a major change is not the best way to evolve the OS. I like the tick-tock method that Intel was known for and Apple has since used with Leopard/Snow Leopard and Lion/Mountain Lion. I hope to see the next revision launch next year. I also hope they move to a free update model like with iOS as I think it would lower support costs across the board.

3 million in 4 days? That's LESS than last years 10.7 selling 1M in the first day¡
Don't think the sales numbers are what counts, to me it's the quality of the product. And if it's not massively popular, not some commercial success, somehow it feels more special. Kind of being part of an elite group, if you will.

The number of sales are pretty much irrelevant to the consumer, especially when you consider the number of eligible Macs that can install ML are so higher than they were for previous versions. Even if WIn8 is a market failure I don't see how it could be bad enough that it won't be break records for MS. We just have to look at Vista over XP to see that.

It wasn't people's 'opinion' of the OS that put me off, it was all the technical problems they were having. The chances of someone doing a professional review having an issue is pretty slim.

If I could get the download to work, I'm sure it would probably install fine. I'm just not willing to take the risk yet, once Apple release an update that kills the initial bugs, I'll take the plunge then.

When I upgraded to Lion as soon as it was released, it totally killed one out of the two Macs I installed it on. That didn't fill me with confidence.

My own personal experience, combined with what others are saying is what is putting me off.

Oddly enough- the only problem I have seems to be with my Apple TV waking my iMac up from sleep to stream my iTunes account. I have 3 Apple TV 3s, and all 3 wont wake the iMac up from sleep anymore... I have to manually go to the computer and push the space bar to wake it up. Pretty annoying and hoping it gets resolved soon as laying in bed trying to watch something- and I have to get up and track down to the office- sucks.